If ‘NCAA Football 18’ were real, here’s how EA Sports might rate each team

EA Sports isn’t releasing a college football game this year, just as it hasn’t since NCAA Football 14 came out in 2013. Seeing as this is mid-July, this is the exact time of the year at which the game would’ve come out. Because of that and the college football season still being more than a month away, jonesing is at peak levels.

We don’t know exactly how all 130 FBS teams would’ve been rated in NCAA 18, but we can take a guess. I used Bill Connelly’s S&P+ projections for each team — which factor recruiting, returning production, and recent history — and crammed those numbers into a 60-to-99 range, like what EA used in 14, then did some fiddlin’ to account for coaching changes, transfers, and such.

On that scale, a team rated 60 is almost certainly the worst in FBS (that scale still leaves room for an FCS team to play like a 45 or so), and a 99 team is likely one of the best ever.

These line up roughly well with the expected preseason rankings and Vegas’ season projections.

Stock NCAA 14 rated defending champ Bama as a 99 across the board and Oregon’s offense as the only other 99. Those all felt a little high, because even Bama should have room for improvement, once you take over and start signing nothing but five-stars. So since none of 2017’s teams look likely to be in the running for greatest ever, nobody’s really close to 99.

Expect the game to return at some point, but not any time soon. You can still play any of the old games, and you can still download updated rosters. Dedicated internet communities update the game’s rosters every year. And the new Madden will include at least a couple college teams in its new story mode.

For now, that’s about all we have, until the NCAA steps out of the way of the free market.